


as subtle as a brick in the small of my back

by pirateygoodness



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/F, Hope Is Definitely Not Ultron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 23:21:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21346444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirateygoodness/pseuds/pirateygoodness
Summary: She fantasizes about killing Supergirl for the first time on a Wednesday.It's not really important, the fact that it's Wednesday. It just strikes Lena, after the fact, how ordinary a day that is.So on a Wednesday Lena wakes up, she goes to work, she goes home and sits with her glass of wine and thinks about that interface she's been working on. About connecting those Obsidian contacts to the AI she's been developing. She thinks about that and she thinks about how angry she is at Kara for being Supergirl and not telling her and the hurt, petty part of her brain thinks:what if.
Relationships: Hope & Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers & Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 14
Kudos: 158





	as subtle as a brick in the small of my back

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Brand New's "Seventy Times 7." 
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: 
> 
> OK AO3 doesn't really have tags that articulate this, but this is a character study that is very specifically compliant with both the state of Kara and Lena's relationship up to ep 5.05 and Lena and Hope's behaviour up until that point. It doesn't go beyond that, but if you are hoping for something soft, shippy, or comforting, this is probably not the fic for you.

She fantasizes about killing Supergirl for the first time on a Wednesday. 

It's not really important, the fact that it's Wednesday. It just strikes Lena, after the fact, how ordinary a day that is. 

So on a Wednesday Lena wakes up, she goes to work, she goes home and sits with her glass of wine and thinks about that interface she's been working on. About connecting those Obsidian contacts to the AI she's been developing. She thinks about that and she thinks about how angry she is at Kara for being Supergirl and not telling her and the hurt, petty part of her brain thinks: _what if._

She always thinks about killing Supergirl. Never Kara. 

Lena knows they're the same, _god_ does she ever know it. But minds are funny things; despite knowing it, there's a part of her that hasn't quite reconciled the two of them. She goes back and forth, one moment furious with Kara for not telling her about Supergirl, and then leaping back to being furious with Supergirl for _existing_ and ruining her friendship with her best friend Kara. 

(This is a lie. She thinks about it once. Killing Kara, that is.) 

(Kara's wearing that dress that Lena loves, the blue sheath dress they picked out on a rare trip shopping together. Kara had smiled at Lena in the most delighted, sunshine way and Lena had called her radiant and they'd hugged in the dressing room, both giggling as Lena helped Kara with the zipper.)

(It's a fantasy. It's a fantasy to work something out, and idly Lena's mind puts Kara in that dress and thinks about what it would be like to kill her.)

(It makes Lena so upset that she won't even look at the Obsidian lenses for a full week.)

+

It's not talking to yourself if an AI is answering back. Obviously. 

"You seem like you have a lot of anger towards your friend Kara. Are you sure she is your friend?" Hope asks, innocent as anything. 

There's something about her learning - trial-and-error, curious and iterative - that Lena finds refreshing. It's not childlike but it is - simple. Unfettered by cynicism. Hope is curious because she's been designed to learn, to be honest. It warms Lena's heart to speak to her. 

Something about the question makes something in Lena's heart twist. Of course Kara's still her friend. Lena couldn't muster up this anger, the kind that comes from deep in her bones, if she wasn't. This aching, persisting kind of wound only ever comes from people Lena's truly cared for. "Of course," she mumbles, just loud enough that Hope can hear. "It's just - complicated, sometimes. The people that we care the most about are the people that can hurt us the most deeply."

"Would you like to hurt Kara, Ms. Luthor?" 

"Of course not," Lena says, but something inside her twists. She does, that's the problem. She does in a way that scares her a little bit, that betrayal bubbling up in the back of her throat like acid until it feels like venom that she could spit back at Kara. She wants Kara to feel how much she's hurting, and hurt just as badly in return. "These simulations are just - an exercise." 

"Do they help with your feelings, Ms. Luthor?" 

Reflected back, Lena feels uneasy. They do, sometimes. Other times, they highlight the depth of that betrayal, and she finishes the simulation just as angry as when she began. "Of course," she says. 

"That's good then, Ms. Luthor." Hope has been designed to be perfectly neutral, but for a moment Lena feels like there's a note in her voice that's almost skeptical. She has a half-second of doubt; unsure if Hope believes her or is agreeing with her to be polite. 

(Except that it must be the former. Lena is Hope's programmer; Hope experiences truth through Lena's eyes by design.) 

(It must be, but there's something about the way that Hope goes quiet for a beat too long before her next question that makes Lena question it, just for a moment.) 

+

She doesn't always channel her feelings into violence. 

Lena also thinks about power. She thinks about Kara on her knees - it's always Kara, never Supergirl - and how Kara might please her. Kara down on the floor, bent forward between Lena's thighs with her mouth open, her tongue nimble. 

"That's it," Lena whispers. "Tell me what you want." 

Kara - fantasy-Kara, her voice sweet and charming - pauses her work. "I want to please you, Lena." 

"What else do you want?" 

"Want to make you feel good. I want to show you how sorry I am." 

"How sorry are you," Lena asks. She always gets a little surge at this part, a rush of pleasure that has nothing to do with Kara's mouth and everything to do with feeling powerful, having Kara between her knees. 

"So sorry," Kara whispers. "I should never have lied to you." 

"What do girls who lie get?" Lena asks. Kara's wearing a collar, and there's a leash attached to it, thin black leather that's suddenly wrapped around Lena's hand despite her hand not having moved. It's a glitch; a sudden shift in the reality of the dream to respond to Lena's desires, not-quite-seamless. 

Kara bites her lip. "Punished." 

Lena tugs at the leash; Kara surges forward to follow it and lands face-first against Lena's cunt. "And do you deserve it?" Lena asks. 

She's on the edge now, on the verge as Kara rocks forward and slides her tongue across Lena's clit. "Yes," Kara whispers. 

Lena comes into Kara's mouth. 

Every time, it's enough to jar the simulation, to pull her out of that world and into the real one where she's tucked into bed with her hand between her legs, her fingertips pressed to her clit and a little damp from her own wetness. She hasn't sorted out the problem yet - is it a sudden change in heart rate, or is there something about the affective intensity -

"Was that satisfactory, Ms. Luthor?" It's Hope; waiting for feedback, already adjusting her simulation parameters in accordance with Lena's responses. 

"Yes," Lena sighs. "It was, Hope. Thank you." 

+

Eve Teschmacher is missing-presumed-dead, as far as the world is concerned. 

(And as far as Lena is concerned, too.) 

Hope fills the Eve-shaped container that Lena provides to her, and it gives her life. It turns Hope from a disembodied voice, as distant and caring as a voice made of electrical signals can be, and turns her into a person. Hope-in-Eve doesn't look like Eve at all. She looks like Lena's friend Hope, who happens to bear a passing resemblance to Lena's ex-colleague Eve Teschmacher. 

(_What would Kara think?_ the back of her mind asks, quietly judgemental. _What would your mother think?_

She doesn't have time for doubts. She's going to change the world.) 

+

Hope - living, breathing, embodied Hope - is the same as she always was, but somehow different. This Hope is warmer, somehow. 

Lena's tense; she's been working on the math of this all night and there's something _missing_. The numbers won't do what she wants them to, and she knows that means there's something she's overlooked but she's checked and rechecked and she can't find it. 

(The math is calming. Math is neutral; it doesn't betray her, it doesn't give her complex feelings or nightmares that keep her awake and anxious at night.)

(If she sticks to the science, she doesn't have to think about anything else.) 

Lena doesn't throw lab equipment, not anymore. The best she can muster is a defeated little sigh as she rolls her stylus away from her, off her desk and onto the floor. Her shoulders are sore; tense from the way she's been hunched over her tablet. 

There's a presence at her side: Hope. "Are you alright, Miss Luthor?" 

_Are you alright._ The question is suddenly hilarious, in a way that makes Lena feel a bit on the wrong side of hysterical and she bites the giggle rising up in her throat into a more socially-appropriate chuckle, finishes it with another sigh. "Yes. Of course, I'm just - we're missing something. I'm close, I can feel it, I just -" 

She stops cold. Hope is touching her. She's running fingertips up Lena's arm, sliding a warm palm across Lena's back and shoulders. It's not enough to release the muscle tension there but it's enough to prompt Lena to forcibly lower her shoulders, to stretch her scapulae back towards themselves. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asks. 

The dissonance of it is unnerving. Lena hasn't quite figured out how to process it yet: the neutrality of Hope's words but with real concern in her voice, oddly human. "No, thank you, Hope." 

Lena shifts away. She tries to ignore the way the physical contact is enough to make her hair stand on end. She shivers. It's involuntary; an automatic body reaction to a change in temperature. Nothing more. 

+

She dreams about Kara. 

Her best friend Kara who is sometimes also Supergirl, with her warm sunshine laugh and the way she makes friendship feel so _easy._ In her dreams, when Kara laughs, Lena doesn't feel bile rising in the back of her throat. She doesn't have to use that veneer of Luthor politeness, ingrained at an early age, to keep from saying something cutting and inappropriate in return. 

Lena doesn't have to fake her way through anything. She can just be. 

She can sit with Kara at dinner, their legs casually tangled together under the table. When Lena rolls her calf to the side, it bumps against Kara, and Kara chuckles in that bright way that meets her eyes. Kara bumps her back, with just the right amount of pressure to be playful, and Lena doesn't have a single intrusive, bitter thought about how much practice it must have taken to learn to control her strength like that. 

In her dreams, Lena can curl in next to Kara on the sofa in Kara's apartment. It's always so soft and inviting; the layers of blankets and pillows something that Lena feels like she could sink into forever. Kara laughs at her, cuddled up and cozy. 

In Lena's dreams, that laugh feels like home. 

+

Lena doesn't sleep for a while. 

She does it by design; drinks coffee four times a day and pushes herself to work through the night. She rests when she has to, when her body is betraying her and even caffeine can't keep her from falling asleep at her workstation. 

She sets up a cot in her lab. 

(_Just like Lex,_ a nasty voice in the back of her head whispers. 

_Shut up,_ she whispers back to the empty room.) 

+

She doesn't need friends. She sees that now. She has Hope, and her work, and that's all she needs to focus on. 

Her work suffers, though. Her mind needs rest, and the tension between avoiding sleep and letting herself get enough sleep that she can hold all the right variables in her thoughts at the same time is - she's managing. But it's not her best work. 

Hope is there for her. Hope is the one who notices when Lena begins to lose focus, and suggests in her soft, rational tone, "Miss Luthor, have you eaten? Perhaps higher blood glucose reserves would make tackling this problem more manageable." 

Hope is the one who puts her to bed, who reassures Lena that she'll continue their work while Lena rests. 

"Miss Luthor," she asks one day, as they're sitting together over lunch. Hope doesn't need to eat, but her body requires regular nutrition, and they've found a system of scheduling meals that works well for them both. "Are you alright?" 

Lena looks up. She gets that feeling again, that tingle at the base of her skull that makes her doubt, for a half-second, Hope's objectivity. "Yes, Hope," she says. Hope reaches out and rests a hand over Lena's, runs her thumb across Lena's knuckles in a gesture that feels eerily human. "I'm sure I'll be fine." 

+

Lena's not fine. She's not fine and she feels it, she's one big raw nerve and every time she sees Kara she's sick with it. 

Every time she looks at her work she's sick with it. 

There's a man in a cell in her lab and Eve - _Hope_ \- is curled up in the little partition they've sectioned off as a bedroom. Hope's body does better with rest as well; they've started sleeping in shifts. 

It's alright, she tells herself, forcing her attention back to the problem at hand. She's going to change the world.


End file.
